Cristina Odone is a journalist, novelist and broadcaster specialising in the relationship between society, families and faith. She is the director of communications for the Legatum institute and is a former editor of the Catholic Herald and deputy editor of the New Statesman. She is married and lives in west London with her husband, two stepsons and a daughter. Her new ebook No God Zone is now available on Kindle.

So much for Bianca’s ex and Sarah’s husband …

While her ex-husband continues to rock ’n’ roll towards 70, Bianca Jagger has moved on (Photo: REUTERS)

From Monday's Daily Telegraph

In our household, Bianca Jagger is an icon. She has taught my daughter how to dance to the Buena Vista Social Club, my husband how to produce an ear-splitting whistle and me how to apply eyeliner in the back of a taxi hurtling towards a party. She’s also taught us that there’s life after Mick.

While her ex-husband continues to rock ’n’ roll towards 70, Bianca has moved on. Typecast by her marriage as a glamorous jet-setter, Bianca was in fact a femme serieuse who leveraged her access and celebrity to realise her own projects. She has been hailed by The Daily Telegraph’s Geoffrey Lean as a “deeply important” authority on the environment, and has become one of the most high-profile supporters of women’s rights.

At the same time that Bianca launched her latest campaign in Berlin to stop violence against women, Sarah Brown unveiled her own campaign here in Britain – A World at School – to educate the 57 million children in poor countries who are not in the classroom. Mick Jagger and Gordon Brown may have little in common, but Bianca and Sarah do: neither wastes any time on the Handmaiden Complex — that peculiarly female affliction which demotes even brilliant women to become their husband’s support staff. Bianca may have divorced Mick but, like Sarah Brown, Raisa Gorbachev, Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, she has seized the opportunities that marriage offered to realise herself.

Their alpha males, with their me-me-me attitude and big-ego agenda, have leeched every ounce of strength and energy from their exasperated-but-kindly wives who must feed, encourage and comfort their spouses. In the end, they recognise their predicament as Mrs Icarus’s: the wife of the ultimate high-flier muses that she’s “not the first or the last / to stand on a hillock,/ watching the man she married/ prove to the world/ he’s a total, utter, absolute, /Grade A pillock.”

Even when a wife realised her husband was a bit of an Icarus, female ambitions were circumscribed: domestic pleasures, village fêtes, family weddings. A woman’s world was small, familiar and intimate. The colonies changed that. The women who sailed to join or find a husband (the “Fishing Fleet” brides were drawn by the four-to-one men-to-women ratio in India) suddenly found themselves in a new world where they could paint on a far larger canvas.

They could choose to stay in the shade (literally and metaphorically), gossiping and scheming like Kipling’s Mrs Hawksbee; or they could opt to engage with their new surroundings, volunteering at schools, hospitals and charities. Their legacy survives in buildings and plaques across Asia, Australia and Africa. The memsahib replaced the handmaiden. The highest calling was no longer supporting one’s husband, but changing a classroom, a hospital ward or even a small corner of the world.

Today, that can-do female spirit motivates Bianca, Sarah, Hillary et al. They have found a role in the world and made a name for themselves. They are thinking big (and tweeting furiously), promoting their projects among ordinary people. In the process they have emancipated themselves from the men who brought them to prominence; some might say, even outgrown them.

Bianca is no more “Mick’s ex” than Sarah is “Gordon’s wife”.

Indeed, my guess is that this new batch of wives with a mission will enjoy a longer shelf life than their spouses. I predict that we’ll soon have the Rolling Stones lead singer described as “Bianca Jagger’s ex” and the former prime minister as “Sarah Brown’s husband”. Behind many a successful woman stands a successful man — in her shadow.